Why did people go on pilgrimages in the Middle Ages?

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A pilgrimage is a physical and a spiritual journey to a sacred site, either a church or a place where a saint may have appeared or a miracle is believed to have taken place. Most religions have the practice of the faithful making pilgrimages to holy places as a way to express their deep belief, to ask to be healed or to do penance for sins. It is way of uplifting the soul.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, life was hard for the majority of the common people. Poverty, disease, war and illiteracy were common. For most people, all that sustained them was a sense of hope and belief in a better world to come with salvation in Jesus Christ. Expressing that hope and wish for salvation by undertaking a long and arduous pilgrimage was a way for people to ask God to perform a miracle on their behalf. It also gave them a means to demonstrate their repentance for any sins they might have committed. Going on a pilgrimage was also the only way a poor person could see some of the world. In those times, common people barely had enough money for necessities and certainly none for travel.

In the early Middle Ages, the second through the eighth Centuries, Christianity began to take hold as the official religion in Europe. The masses often worshipped pagan idols and had many shrines and sacred places which were associated with those idols. The Christian authorities either destroyed these sites or replaced them with Christian significance. They put relics of the saints in these newly consecrated churches. Statues of Jesus and Mary were placed on the altars. Thus they sanctified the former places of idol worship and encouraged the common people to continue making pilgrimages to these places. The healing and the supposed miracles that took place there were now attributed to the influence of their own Christian saints.

Because there were so many holy sites and not enough saints or relics, the church had to create more. They did this by canonizing dead Christians as saints and “discovering” new relics for those saints. The church authorities were successful in convincing the people that it was the saints who answered their prayers, granted their requests and made miracles for them. With the success of this process the age of medieval pilgrimages had begun.

In the Middle Ages, Christianity fought to become the dominant religion in Europe. In 1095 with the First Crusade, Pope Urban II explicitly encouraged the faithful to take possession of the Christian holy shrines and to visit them. These visits would serve as acts of penance and would be means of gaining salvation. Later, from the 12th to the 15th centuries, the pilgrimage was very popular. There had been pilgrimages to the Holy Land as early as the 4th century with the discovery by Saint Helena, the mother of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine, of what was considered to be the true cross. Pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem were important landmarks of places where significant events occurred in the Christian narrative. There were many holy places throughout Europe for those who could only make shorter pilgrimages. Crusaders returning from the Holy Land brought back many relics that were placed in churches throughout Europe. This led to a 400-year period of pilgrimage throughout Europe.

The medieval tradition of Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land continues even to this day. Modern Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, make pilgrimages to the same sites in the Holy Land that were visited by pilgrims in medieval times. These days, of course, a pilgrimage is most often a luxury vacation that begins with a plane journey followed by air conditioned buses with tour guides and accommodations in comfortable hotels. But the impulse of the pilgrim to make a spiritual connection with a place that is significant to his or her religious faith is the same as it was for the medieval religious pilgrims.

Resource by A.Moore

I just moved to Michigan from South Carolina. This is my first winter here and so far it's freezing. I enjoy traveling, drawing, camping, writing, and doing community service in my spare time. I work for a education company and help them with their outreach to teachers and students. Hope everyone enjoys my articles.

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